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CHAPTER 14
From Music Therapy to the
Music of Madness
There may be various reasons for the scarcity of armonica players,
principally the almost universally shared opinion that playing it is
damaging to the health, that it excessively stimulates the nerves,
plunges the player into a nagging depression, and hence into a dark
and melancholy mood.
—Friedrich Rochlitz, 1798
On July 13, 1762, just prior to departing England, Franklin penned a letter to
Father Giambatista Beccaria, a professor of natural philosophy and the most
ardent supporter of his electrical science in Italy.1 Beccaria had sent a new treatise on electricity to Franklin, and Franklin used the occasion to tell him about
his latest invention, the glass armonica. It was his gift to people who loved
music, and he expected it to revolutionize the playing of musical glasses.
What neither man knew at the time was that Franklin’s glass instrument
would be associated with medicine in two very different ways. For some, its
strange music would be looked upon as a way to lift one’s spirits, to soothe
the angry, and to heal the sick. But for others, it would be closely tied to
frayed nerves and even insanity. The unusual charms of armonica music and
even its use in music therapy became apparent to Franklin soon after he
invented the glass instrument in England. The association with madness
would take on a life of its own while he was in France, and it would have a lot
to do with Mesmer.2
MUSICAL GLASSES
The Greeks recognized that tapping cups and jars of various sizes with their
fingers, sticks, or even pebbles could produce distinct musical sounds.3 The
ancients also realized that filling matched containers with different amounts
of liquid could produce different notes.
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Giambatista Beccaria (1716–1781), who Franklin wrote to about his glass
armonica in 1761.
During the thirteenth century, when Westerners began to explore the
world, they found that musicians in the Middle and Far East played glass
bowls. It was not until well into the fifteenth century, however, that the first
references to musical glasses appeared in Western books on music. In
Franchino Gafori’s Theoria musicae, which was published in 1492, there is
even an illustration of a person tapping glasses filled with different amounts
of liquid.4
Galileo wrote about an alternative way of making sounds with glass in
1638. In his Two New Sciences, he discussed how rubbing moist fingertips on
the rims of water glasses could produce different tones.5 Toward the end of
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the century, wine glasses were being played with some frequency at small
social gatherings, where music lovers were charmed by the sounds.
During Franklin’s own century, musical glasses and their players achieved
much higher status. In the hands of Christian Gottfried Helmond and others, they began to be used as concert instruments. The eighteenth-century
literature abounds with references to the “verrillon,” which could be accompanied by violins, basses, and other concert instruments. The verrillon (from
the French verre, meaning glass) was a table on which a set of glasses filled
with precise amounts of liquid could be set. The musician’s job was to strike
the glasses with a long stick to elicit desired notes.
Early in the 1740s, Richard Pockrich learned to play the verrillon. This
free-spirited Irishman first tapped his glasses and then learned to rub their
rims with his moistened fingers to produce more drawn out, celestial sounds.
In 1746, Christoph Willibald Gluck played a concerto at the new Haymarket
Theatre in London that utilized a Glasspiel made of twenty-six glasses “tuned
with spring water.”6
In 1761, Miss Ann Ford, a popular performer on the musical glasses, published a pamphlet on how to play wineglasses “in a few days, if not a few
hours.”7 Five years later, and perhaps even more telling of how popular
music glasses had become, Oliver Goldsmith referred to them in his bestselling novel The Vicar of Wakefield with these words: “The two ladies
threw my girls quite into the shade, for they would talk of nothing but high
life, and high-lived company; with other fashionable topics, such as pictures,
The verrillon, a musical instrument that used a set of glasses filled with
different amounts of liquid.
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taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.”8 Franklin’s own glass instrument already had a large following when Goldsmith, who had trained in
medicine at Edinburgh, published these telling lines in 1771.
FRANKLIN’S ARMONICA
Josiah Franklin played the violin and had a good singing voice. Following in
his father’s musical footsteps, Benjamin learned to play a number of instruments, including the viola da gamba, the harp, the Welsh harp, the bell harp,
the harpsichord, the spinet, the Chinese gong, and a type of xylophone.9 He
might also have played the violin and the guitar, and he definitely enjoyed
singing. But it was his interest in electricity that led him to glass music.
In 1758, Franklin made a trip from London to Cambridge to see Edmund
Delaval, a talented electrical scientist and the first of his nominees for membership in the Royal Society.10 There he discovered that Delaval owned a set
of musical glasses that he played masterfully. Thomas Gray, who heard
Delaval play in 1760, wrote: “We heard Delaval the other night play upon
the water glasses, & I was astonish’d. No instrument that I know has so
celestial a tone. I thought it was a Cherubim in a box.”11
In the letter describing his new instrument to Father Beccaria, Franklin
mentioned both Pockrich and Delaval. He explained: “Mr. Puckeridge, a gentleman from Ireland, was the first who thought about playing tunes, formed
from these tones. He collected a number of glasses of different sizes, fixed
them near each other on a table, and tuned them by putting into them water,
more or less, as each note required. The tones were brought out by passing his
fingers round their brims.” But, he continued, “Mr. E. Delaval, a most ingenious member of our Royal Society, made one in imitation of it, with a better
choice and form of glasses, which was the first I saw or heard. Being charmed
with the sweetness of its tones, and the music he produced from it, I wished
only to see the glasses disposed in a more convenient form.”12
Franklin’s armonica utilized twenty-three soda-lime “hemispheres” of different diameters, each with a hole in the base. The bowls were assembled on
an iron spindle from largest to smallest, with a small piece of cork between
each one. The spindle was then placed horizontally in a tapered wooden case.
A flywheel attached to a foot treadle allowed the player to rotate the bowls
while touching them with fingers on one or both hands. Franklin explained to
Beccaria that the “instrument is played upon by sitting before the middle of
the set of glasses . . . turning them with the foot, and wetting them now and
then with a spunge and clean water.” He then added: “The advantages of
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Franklin’s glass armonica (from his Papers 10: 126–130).
this instrument are, that its tones are incomparably sweet beyond those of any
other; that they may be swelled and softened at pleasure by stronger or
weaker pressures of the finger, and continued to any length; and that the
instrument, being once well tuned, never again wants tuning. In honour of
your musical language, I have borrowed from it the name of this instrument,
calling it the Armonica.”13
Franklin probably began working on his armonica right after seeing
Delaval. In a letter dated April 1761, Thomas Penn informed James Hamilton, the new governor of Pennsylvania, that Franklin was wasting time
“in philosophical, and especially in electrical matters, and musical performances on glasses.”14 At a later date, Franklin defended his behavior to
Cadwallader Colden, writing: “While in England, after my chief Business
was over, I amus’d myself, with contriving and bringing to a considerable
Degree of Perfection, a new musical instrument, which has afforded me and
my Friends a good deal of Pleasure.”15
By the end of 1762, the armonica was already being built commercially in
London. Franklin was so pleased with his latest invention that he even took
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one with him to America later that year. In the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt
we read: “I have heard Dr. Franklin invented the Harmonica, he concealed it
from his wife till the instrument was fit to play; and then woke her with it one
night, when she took it to be the music of angels.”16
Franklin’s daughter Sally, who was trained on the harpsichord, soon
began to play it. During the winter of 1763, she received some Scottish
songs from Janet Dick, the fourteen-year-old daughter of Sir Alexander
Dick, the eminent physician who housed and entertained Franklin in Edinburgh in 1759. Later that year, Franklin informed Sir Alexander: “I play
some of the softest Tunes on my Armonica, with which Entertainment our
People here are quite charmed, and conceive Scottish Tunes to be the finest
in the World.”17
On December 27, 1764, the Pennsylvania Gazette announced a concert at
the Assembly Room in Lodge Alley. The venue was to be “a Variety of the
most celebrated Pieces now in Taste, in which also will be introduced the
famous Armonica, or Musical Glasses, so much admired for the great Sweetness and Delicacy of its Tones.” A few months after the Philadelphia event,
there was an armonica concert at Raleigh’s Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia. George Washington paid 3 shillings 9 pence to hear it.
The Europeans were even more fascinated by Franklin’s armonica. In
Britain, Miss Marianne Davies emerged as the first lady of the new instrument. She filled concert halls in England, sometimes with her sister Cecilia
singing to the music, and she referred to Franklin as her benefactor. Davies
then began a concert tour of Europe. She was applauded in Ireland, Italy,
France, and Germany, where Franklin had become “as famous among German musicians for his harmonica as among German electricians for his lightning rod.”18
By the mid-1760s, Davies was in music-hungry Vienna, where Gluck, one
of the most ardent promoters of glass music, was the chapel-master. Empress
Maria Theresa and the royal family fell in love with the new music and with
Davies’ artistry. Maria Theresa’s fifteenth child and youngest daughter, Marie
Antoinette, even took lessons on the armonica from Marianne Davies, having
no idea that its inventor would later appear in her royal court as an American
ambassador to France.
The Mozarts were in and out of Vienna at this time, and it was here that
they first heard the glass armonica. The same can be said for Franz Anton
Mesmer, who lived in Vienna and was entranced by the unusual instrument.
Mesmer loved music and he had already mastered the violin, cello, and clavichord. After meeting the Mozarts, Mesmer commissioned Wolfgang to write
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Bastien und Bastienne, an opera that was first performed during the fall of
1768.19 Thereafter, the Mozarts remained in contact with Mesmer.
In 1773, Leopold Mozart sent a letter to his wife, telling her “The Mesmers
are all well and in good form as usual. Herr von Mesmer, at whose house we
lunched on Monday, played to us on Miss Davies’s Harmonica or glass
instrument and played very well. It cost him about 50 ducats and is very
beautifully made.”20
Three weeks later, Leopold informed her: “Do you know that Herr von
Mesmer plays Miss Davies’s harmonica unusually well? He is the only person in Vienna who has learnt it and he possesses a much finer instrument than
Miss Davies does. Wolfgang too has played upon it.”21
But although Mozart enjoyed playing Mesmer’s armonica as a teenager, he
did not compose for it until 1791, a year after Franklin had died. The event
that stimulated him to pick up his pen was an armonica concert given in
Vienna by Marianne Kirchgässner, who had been blind since age four. He was
so inspired by her performance that he composed his Adagio and Rondo for
Glass Harmonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola and Cello (K. 617) and Adagio Solo for
the Glass Harmonica (K. 356) specifically for her.22
The attraction that the armonica had for Mesmer and the Mozarts reflected
its broad appeal. It has been estimated that several hundred compositions
were written with a part for Franklin’s armonica by the end of the century.
More followed early in the nineteenth century. Ludwig van Beethoven, for
example, would write an armonica piece for Leonora Prohaska, a tragic play
by Friedrich Dunker, in 1815.
MUSIC THERAPY
Glass music, perhaps more than any other kind, was already associated with
an uncanny ability to affect people when Franklin came forth with his armonica. One of the tales known to Franklin involved Richard Pockrich.
Mr. Pockrich, in his brewery near Island-bridge, happening one day to be seized by
bailiffs, thus addressed them: “Gentleman, I am your prisoner, but before I do
myself the honour to attend you, give me leave as an humble performer of musick,
to entertain you with a tune.” . . . In the meantime, he flourishes a prelude on the
glasses, and afterwards displays his skill thro’ all the pleasing turns and variations of
the Black Joke. The monsters, charm’d with the magic of his sounds, for some time
stand at gaze. At length, recovering their trance, thus accost the Captain: “Sir, upon
your parole of honour to keep the secret, we give you your liberty. ’Tis well, playing
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upon the glasses is not more common: if it were, I believe our trade would find little employment.”23
Franklin never denied that music, and especially glass music, could have
powerful effects on people’s emotions and health. He might even have read
Richard Browne’s Medicina Musica, or, A Mechanical Essay on the Effects of
Singing, Musick, and Dancing, on Human Bodies, which was published in
1727.24 But even more likely to have caught his eye was Richard Brocklesby’s Reflections on Ancient and Modern Music, with the Application to the
Cure of Diseases, a treatise dated 1749.25 Brocklesby was an influential London physician whose clientele, like that of Franklin’s close friend John
Fothergill, included the rich and the famous.
Franklin also learned how glass music could affect people from personal
experience. Soon after arriving home in 1762, he used his armonica to great
advantage to ease the strain of a potentially heated meeting with Ann Graeme,
the wife of Thomas Graeme, a fashionable Philadelphia physician, who had
worked with Franklin on several projects. Franklin’s son William had proposed marriage to the Graemes’ daughter Elizabeth in 1756, before he went
with his father to England. “Betsy” had accepted his proposal, with the provision that he would not engage in factional politics. But while abroad, “Billy”
lost interest in her. Prior to coming back to America, he married Elizabeth
Downes, whose father owned a sugar plantation in Barbados.
The inevitable meeting with Betsy’s mother that Benjamin Franklin had
been dreading took place in his Philadelphia home. Hoping to soothe Mrs.
Graeme and to keep things under control, he first entertained her with some
light tunes on his armonica. The strategy of relaxing her with armonica
music before turning to discuss what Billy did to her daughter was successful.
Tempers did not flare and Ann Graeme left the Franklin residence with a calm
demeanor.
Realizing that Shakespeare was right when he wrote, “music oft hath such
a charm to make bad good” (from Measure for Measure), Franklin also recommended listening to armonica music to Debby. His wife was justifiably
dejected when he was whisked back to London on his second diplomatic mission so soon after having returned home. Hoping to lift her spirits, he told the
woman who had earlier thought she had heard “the music of angels,” “Let
Sally divert you with her Music. Put her on Practicing on the Armonica.”26
Franklin took music therapy to a higher level in 1772. His patient was
Princess Izabella Fleming Czartoryska, who was prone to depression and
hysteria. The princess was the openly unfaithful wife of Adam Kazimierz
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Czartoryski, a wealthy Polish nobleman, the foreign affairs minister under
Czar Alexander I, and a patriot.27 The prince is still remembered as one of
the men who brought the Enlightenment to Poland, and even before he
joined the Loge des Neuf Soeurs, he had become a devoted follower of
Franklin and his ideas.28
Franklin first met the prince and his twenty-six-year-old wife in London.29
“I was ill, in a state of melancholia, and writing my testament and farewell letters,” the princess recalled. “Wishing to distract me, my husband explained to
me who Franklin was and to what he owed his fame. . . . Franklin had a noble
face with an expression of engaging kindness. Surprised by my immobility,
he took my hands and gazed at me saying: pauvre jeune femme [poor young
woman]. He then opened a harmonium, sat down and played long. The music
made a strong impression on me and tears began flowing from my eyes.Then
Franklin sat by my side and looking with compassion said, ‘Madam, you are
cured.’ Indeed that moment was a reaction to my melancholia. Franklin
offered to teach me how to play the harmonium—I accepted without hesitation, hence he gave me twelve lessons.”30
The reference to the “harmonium” in this translated passage of how the
Polish princess was treated by Franklin can be questioned. The harmonium
is a small, manually pumped reed organ with a keyboard that did not make
its debut in Europe until 1842. More likely, Franklin lifted this melancholic
woman’s sprits with his armonica (also incorrectly referred to as his “harmonica” in many books and letters), the musical instrument that he adored
and most loved to demonstrate at this time.
Unfortunately, the effects of Franklin’s music therapy were short-lived.
Within a year, the Polish princess went from being happy and entertaining a
lover again to being stricken with “attacks of nerves” and fainting spells.
Izabella Czartoryska even attempted suicide. After more failed love affairs,
the birth of an illegitimate son, and the deaths of two of her children, she
developed hysterical palsy. This time she was treated with therapeutic electricity, which appeared to have more lasting effects.
Whether Franklin recommended the electrical treatment based on his
colonial experience with hysterical case C.B. (see Chapter 6) is not clear.
Interestingly, no mention is made of the princess in any of his known letters. Franklin does not even tell us why he thought music might have been
helpful in her case. But, as with medical electricity for hysterics, two basic
possibilities have to be considered, one physical and the other mental.
In the physical realm, many eighteenth-century physicians believed that
musical vibrations and exercises could stimulate the nerves and increase the
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circulation, both of which might produce a better frame of mind. Thomas
Cadwalader expressed the idea that music could act as a stimulant in his Essay
on the Dry-Gripes, which Franklin published in 1745, writing “every Stroke of
a musical Instrument causes an Undulation of the Air, which giving some
Degree of Concussion to the Fibres of the Body, without overstraining them,
produces a brisker Circulation of the Blood; and consequently invigorates the
Nerves, and lessens the Viscidity of the Fluids. . . . It might perhaps be applied
to very noble Purposes . . . it may, by acting on the Solids, be the means of
regulating our Passions.”31
The second possibility is that Franklin used his armonica to effect a cure
based on nothing more than suggestion. He might have thought that it would
first soothe or charm the princess, taking her mind off what was disturbing
her, much as it did for Ann Graeme. Once relaxed, if not intoxicated by his
glass music, he could complete his masterful deception, telling the princess in
just so many words that she had been cured.
In his commentary on this case, Z. J. Lipowski (who also translated the
Polish) wrote: “It may seem exaggerated to regard Franklin as a precursor of
modern brief psychotherapy on the basis of one sketchy anecdote. Yet one
cannot fail to be impressed by his remarkable display of the very elements of
such therapy which are essential to its success. Empathy and warmth, sensitivity and genuine interest, a confident attitude and a touch of suggestion
(“Madame, you are cured”), and reinforcement (twelve sessions or
“Lessons”), are all key ingredients. In addition, Franklin was a famous older
man and seemed to have an air of self-confident yet kind authority about him.
None of these characteristics was likely to be lost on the perceptive younger
woman.”32
MADNESS AND THE ARMONICA
Elkanah Watson, a young American entrepreneur who visited Franklin in
France during 1781, provides us with an engaging vignette of a relaxed
Franklin with his armonica.
I dined and spent the evening with Franklin, at Passy. He asked me if I knew he was
a musician, and then conducted me across the room to an instrument of his own
invention, fixed as a harpsichord. On my intimating a wish to see him perform, he
immediately placed himself before it with his habitual condescension, touching the
ends of his fingers on a moistened piece of sponge, and commenced playing with
his right foot, bearing upon a treadel fixed in the manner of a spinning wheel, which
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turned a set of musical glasses . . . so as to produce all of the requisite tones. He
touched the edges with the ends of his fingers, playing a Scottish pastoral tune, in
sweet delicate melody, which thrilled me to my very soul.”33
We also have some wonderful images from Franklin about how much he
enjoyed playing the armonica for his coquettish neighbor in Passy, Madame
Brillon, who was accomplished on the harpsichord and pianoforte (Boccherini dedicated six sonatas to her). In one of his letters, Franklin wrote: “In
forty years, I shall have time to practice on the armonica, and perhaps I shall
play well enough to accompany you on your pianoforte. From time to time
we shall have little concerts . . . And we shall pity those who are not dead.”35
From these communications it might seem hard to believe that others
were beginning to have very different emotions about Franklin’s armonica.
But at the same time, some performers, town officials, and laymen were
beginning to look upon it and its music with suspicion, fright, and outright
terror. A few of these individuals probably knew Shakespeare’s famous
words about music having charm. A smaller number would have known that
the Bard then went on to warn that music can also “provoke to harm.”
Some of the early critics of the armonica were bothered by its strange,
high-pitched, otherworldly sounds. “Its social effects were such as no other
instrument whatever has produced. Its tones could . . . make women faint;
send a dog into convulsions; make a sleeping girl wake screaming through a
chord of the diminished seventh, and even cause the death of one very
young,” wrote Karl Leopold Röllig of Hamburg in 1787.35
To some of Röllig’s contemporaries, what had happened to several musicians who played the instrument day after day was even more disconcerting.
Marianne Kirchgässner, the blind musician whose armonica performances
inspired Mozart to write for the instrument, died a horrible death that “was
attributed to deterioration of her nerves caused by the unusually piercing
vibrations of the instrument.”36
The talented Marianne Davies, who had been the toast of Europe, also
fell ill. In January 1778, she was taken to Paris “on account of health” by her
mother and sister.37 Cecilia sent a gracious note to Franklin notifying him of
the situation, and Franklin politely invited the entourage to join him for dinner. Nevertheless, his invitation to join him at Passy was declined. Marianne
Davies told others that Franklin’s armonica was the cause of her health
problems.
Mozart’s death at thirty-five only added to the negative perception. The
composer seemed to come down with a strange illness within a few months
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of starting to compose for the armonica. Was this just another coincidence?
Was the armonica in some way the cause?
Three years before Mozart died, Johann Christian Müller had even issued
a stern warning to readers of his new instructional manual for the armonica.
He advised: “If you have been upset by harmful novels, false friends, or perhaps a deceiving girl then abstain from playing the armonica—it will only
upset you even more. There are people of this kind—of both sexes—who
must be advised not to study the instrument, in order that their state of mind
should not be aggravated.”38
Friedrich Rochlitz, writing for Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitlung, was even
more poignant a few years later. He contended that there “may be various
reasons for the scarcity of armonica players, principally the almost universally shared opinion that playing it is damaging to the health, that it excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression,
and hence into a dark and melancholy mood, that it is an apt method for slow
self-annihilation. . . . Many (physicians with whom I have discussed this matter) say the sharp penetrating tone runs like a spark though the entire nervous system, forcibly shaking it up and causing nervous disorders.”39
In response to fears that the vibrations from physical contact with the
glasses could be damaging to one’s nerves, a few inventors tried to modify
the instrument or how it might be played. One such person was the critic
Röllig. He worked on constructing a keyboard for the armonica. Others also
tried this innovation, which made the armonica a bit like a harpsichord, but
this “improvement” repeatedly failed.
This fact was not lost on Franklin, who mentioned it in a letter to the
Comte de Salmes in 1785.
“I received the Letter . . . respecting the Application of Keys to the Harmonica as
contriv’d by Abbé Perno; and requesting to know if any thing of the kind had been
done in Paris, London or elsewhere. When I was in London, about 12 years since,
Mr. Steele an ingenious Musician there, made an Attempt of that sort; but the Tones
were with Difficulty produc’d by the Touch from the Keys, and the Machinery in
Playing made so much Noise and Rattle, as to diminish greatly the Pleasure given
by the Sound of the Glasses; so that I think the Instrument was never completed.
The Duchess of [unclear word] at Paris about the same time endeavor’d to obtain
the same End, and has not yet laid aside the Project, tho’ it has not hitherto perfectly
succeeded. Baron Feriet of Versailles, began to work on the same Idea about the
Time I receiv’d your Letter. . . . I hoped soon to have given you an Account of his
Success; but I begin to doubt it.40
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A keyboard was not the only idea that was bandied about. Another way of
distancing the player from the vibrating bowls was with a violin-like bow.41
Here too, despite the best efforts of a number of inventors and others, the
innovation failed.
THE MESMER EFFECT
The contention that armonica music could fray nerves and leave people in a
state of permanent insanity was enhanced by Mesmer’s association with the
glass instrument. Mesmer, after all, often played it at his séances. The way
that it affected his clients, and the fact that some of his patients seemed to be
mentally unstable, made outsiders more than a little uncomfortable. In addition, Mesmer played the instrument for his own enjoyment, and to many
people he appeared even more deranged or mad than some of his patients
seemed to be.
Mesmer actually played his armonica in his therapy sessions for two reasons that he related to his new theory of medicine. First, he felt that it created
the special ambience he wanted his patients to experience in his clinic, just as
did his robe, the lighting, and the manner in which he decorated his baquet
rooms. As put by music historian A. Hyatt King, “there seems little doubt
that Mesmer used his mastery of the highly emotional tones of the harmonica to induce a receptive state in his patients.”42
Even more important, he believed that music, particularly armonica music,
could enhance the flow of his invisible magnetic force into and throughout
the body. From this second perspective, it contributed directly to the removal
of blockages and was an integral part of the cure. When writing about his
theory and its application, Mesmer listed a number of “Propositions.” That
animal magnetism “is communicated, propagated, and intensified by sound”
is stated under Proposition 16 in his 1779 Mémoire.43
There are many detailed descriptions of how people were affected by Mesmer’s armonica music. “Mr. Mesmer’s house is like a divine temple,” wrote
Jean-Jacques Paulet in his Mesmer Justifié in 1784. “There are magnetized
bars, closed tubs, wands, ropes, magnetized flowering shrubs, and musical
instruments including the harmonica, whose piping stirs one guest, causes
slight rambling in another, laughter and tears in others.”44 Another report
dealt with a client who, like Franklin, suffered from gout. Mesmer began by
pressing his finger against the part of the patient’s body that hurt, producing
a tingling that followed his finger as he moved it over the skin. “Mr. Mesmer
then seated him near the harmonica; he had hardly begun to play when my
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friend was affected emotionally, trembled, lost his breath, changed color, and
felt pulled toward the floor.”45
Mesmer’s armonica music even affected Deslon, who had long suffered
stomach pains and was thought to have an embarras (obstruction) in his head.
One biographer of Mesmer tells us: “Mesmer experimented on him—apparently not very seriously—by playing on the glass harmonica or the piano
and conveying animal magnetism to him. Deslon was obliged to beg for
mercy about the music, presumably because of the discomfort caused by the
charge of animal magnetism which it carried.”46
Music historian King contends that it was none other than “Mesmer, who
next to Marianne Davies, probably did more than anyone else to spread its
[the armonica’s] fame.”47 King probably should have added “and infamy,”
given how people were beginning to feel about Franklin’s instrument during
the 1780s. And popular perceptions were not about to improve.
THE PHANTASMAGORIA
To some entrepreneurs, and even to some famous composers, the armonica
had become the perfect instrument to frighten people. Could there be a better instrument for conveying images of madness? And what sounds could be
better for conjuring up mind-deranging images of the supernatural or of
death itself?
The master of optics and illusions at the end of the eighteenth century was
Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, a smart, creative, and a shrewd businessman
who knew how to promote his artistry.48 He specialized in chilling horror
shows for adults, using magic lantern slides and other devices. Robertson’s
crowning achievement was the fantasmagorie (phantasmagoria in English).
Its name derived from the Greek phantasma, meaning phantom, and agoereuein, meaning to speak in public.
Robertson’s first full-scale production took place in Paris a few years
before the eighteenth century ended. By skillfully projecting his slides on
invisible screens, walls, or even smoke, and by doubling them up and changing them at opportune times, he terrified people. He had ghosts, frightful
witches, and other horrible figures increase and decrease in size, move forward and backward, and then vanish into the ground after having slowly
arisen from their eerie tombs.
Robertson knew how to enhance the effects he wanted. He did things like
locking his paying audience in a dark room and giving nightly shows in the
crypt of an abandoned Capuchin convent. He also provided terrifying openBrought to you by | UCL - University College London
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FROM MUSIC THERAPY TO THE MUSIC OF MADNESS
249
ing words and tales about death, ghosts, and the supernatural. And, with the
lights blown out and the audience perhaps watching a heart-stopping witches’
Sabbath, he added just the right music. Hidden from sight, his armonica
player completed the effect, causing some women to faint right in their seats.
Robertson’s shows were so good that he soon had competitors. One was
Paul de Philipstal, whose shows in London’s Lyceum Theatre also dazzled
audiences. Given the outcome of the American War of Independence, and
how many conservative Londoners felt about Franklin, the magic lantern
illusion that his audiences seemed to enjoy most was “the head of Dr.
Franklin being converted into a skull.”49
In the context of what people were now thinking, it is easy to understand
why Domenico Donizetti chose to include a part for the glass armonica in his
immensely popular opera, Lucia di Lammermoor. Donizetti wanted to use the
glass instrument in the crowning highlight of his masterpiece, the mad scene.
But in part because the instrument now had such a frightening reputation,
Donizetti was unable to find a good armonica player when his opera was
scheduled to make its debut in the 1830s, and he had to rewrite the part for
several flutes.
LINGERING QUESTIONS
There are many reasons for the demise and almost complete disappearance
of Franklin’s armonica from the stage by Donizetti’s time.50 One was the
irrational fears stemming from writers claiming that its sounds could wake
the dead, destroy the nerves of both players and listeners, cause premature
births, and even trigger convulsions.
Another was the belief that people could use the instrument to exploit
unsuspecting citizens. Mesmer’s use of the armonica at his séances showed
how it allowed him to control other people. In this regard, when Franklin
agreed to serve on the commission that discredited mesmerism in 1784, he
might have helped to kill his own progeny. If the association had not been
made earlier, people now learned how the armonica had been used by one of
the best known symbols of madness as the curtain began to come down on
the Enlightenment.
The high costs of buying and maintaining an armonica did not help. Nor
did changing tastes, as Classicism gave way to Romanticism. Franklin’s glass
armonica, with its soft ethereal notes, found itself on the wrong side of the
curve as the demand for more powerful orchestral pieces continued to
increase. But whereas such factors have to be considered in any history of
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250
LE DOCTEUR IN FRANCE
the armonica, two medical questions remain. Could the health problems of
Marianne Davies and the other armonica players have resulted from lead
poisoning due to the type of glass used? And did Franklin really believe that
the vibrations from his glass instrument could cause nerve damage?
Although some people have raised the possibility that the glass used in the
instrument had a high lead content, and therefore might have contributed to
the nervous problems that some armonica performers suffered late in their
careers, the evidence for this is scanty at best. The armonica players were not
involved in the manufacturing or grinding of leaded glass, which could have
posed a real danger, and the glasses used might not even have been leaded.
Franklin, for example, used soda-lime glasses in his original instruments.
Even more important, the glasses were empty. They were not filled with an
acid that might have leached some lead into the solution and onto the fingers
of the performer. Thus, even if some of the early players developed chronic
lead poisoning—and this is speculative at best—it is much more likely that
they derived it from the tainted wines they were drinking, or perhaps from
other sources, and not from the spinning glasses they were touching.
As for how Franklin reacted to the fears that began to be associated with his
musical instrument in the 1780s, all available evidence would suggest that that
he did not take the mass hysteria seriously. He continued to play his own
armonica into his twilight years, showing absolutely no signs of shattered
nerves or mental instability resulting from the vibrations. Had he entertained
even the slightest doubt about the health risks of his armonica, he would have
stopped its production and warned people. But Franklin did not do either of
these things. Instead he encouraged his daughter, his friends, and the children
of those he loved dearly to enjoy his creation. Even in his final years, while
others were assailing his armonica, he never looked back on his instrument
with any regret.
To Franklin, the myths that sprung up about his armonica were just another
example of the gullibility of the human species. As far as he was concerned
the issue was not worth a pamphlet or even a letter to set the matter straight.
He had far more important things to do in his remaining years than to enter
the bizarre concert hall of the absurd, including attending to his own health
problems.
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